Naxos

Naxos is the largest of the Cyclades, and the one to choose if you have a family or a long stay. The interior is mountainous and farmed, the west coast has long, unbroken beaches, and the old town shows its Venetian past in plain layers. Nothing about it is arranged for the camera, and that is its appeal.

The Portara is the image that greets every arrival. It is a single marble doorway, built in the sixth century BC as the entrance to a Temple of Apollo that was never finished. It stands alone on a small headland and frames the sunset for the half of the harbour that bothers to walk over. It is a moving ruin, partly because of what is missing.

For three centuries Naxos was the seat of the Venetian Duchy of the Archipelago. The fortified Castro quarter still wraps around the upper old town, with thirteenth-century coats of arms above the doorways and Catholic chapels. It also holds a small archaeological museum in a former Jesuit school where the young Nikos Kazantzakis briefly studied. Below the fortress, the lanes of the agora, the old market quarter, hold the best tavernas in town.

The rest of the island is food. There are Naxos graviera and arseniko cheeses, potatoes that taste of something, and Kitron, a liqueur distilled from citron leaves in a tradition found only on this island. In the small village restaurants of Apiranthos and Halki, the menu changes with what came in that morning. Plan on five nights, a hire car and an appetite.

House Notes

  1. Arrival

    Naxos Airport (JNX) has flights from Athens of about an hour. Ferries from Rafina or Piraeus dock at the port of Naxos Town, taking 3.5 to 4 hours by high-speed ferry from Piraeus or 5.5 to 6 hours by conventional ferry. A helicopter from Athens takes about 50 minutes and lands for onward transfer to the town or the southern beaches.

  2. The address

    Naxian Collection, above Agios Prokopios Beach, has 16 private villas and suites and is the closest Naxos comes to a curated luxury address. The estate has its own winery, a farm-to-table kitchen and a spa, and lies a short drive from Naxos Town and the airport.

  3. The kitchens

    Lefteris at Apiranthos, a marble village high in the hills, serves its cooking on a terrace shaded by walnut trees. Axiotissa at Kastraki, at the 18th kilometre of the Naxos to Alyko road, was opened in 2000 by Sofia and Giannis Vassilas and cooks a farm menu from its own garden. O Vassilis at Melanes is an inland tavern under a grapevine pergola that raises its own roosters, lamb and goats.

  4. The Vallindras Distillery

    The Vallindras Distillery in Halki dates from 1896 and is run by the fifth generation of the Vallindras family, the only producer of Kitron PDO (Protected Designation of Origin) on Naxos. Its museum holds 19th-century furniture, the original copper stills and a production line still fed by fire, and visitors taste three strengths of Kitron free. Halki was the old capital before Naxos Town took over.

  5. The Kouros of Apollonas

    On the northern coast, in an ancient quarry above Apollonas, an unfinished Kouros, a statue of a standing youth, lies where it was abandoned in the 7th century BC. It is 10.7 metres of light grey Naxian marble, and the recess for a lifting beam (40 cm wide) and the keyholes in its back are still visible. No route was ever cut to move it, and the figure stayed because, at about 80 tonnes, it was too heavy to move.

  6. Panagia Drosiani

    Panagia Drosiani is the oldest Byzantine church in the Cyclades, built in phases between the 4th and 6th centuries: a stone basilica with three apses and frescoes painted over one another across five centuries. It stands among olive groves in the Tragea valley, between Halki and Moni village. It opens daily through the season, depending on the caretaker; out of season, ask in Halki.

  7. Mount Zas

    Mount Zas is the highest peak in the Cyclades at 1,003 metres, and legend says a cave on its slope sheltered the infant Zeus. The trail from Filoti starts at the Aria Spring, 3 km up from the village, and climbs past the Cave of Zas to the summit. Allow three hours for the round trip, and in summer start before 9am.

  8. The beaches

    The west coast has the long sand beaches of Agios Prokopios, Agia Anna and Plaka; Plaka is the longest, 4 kilometres of sand with no row of tavernas, and south of it Mikri Vigla is the beach for windsurfing. Further north, on the east coast, Apollonas has a pebble cove beside the kouros quarry, the swim closest to the unfinished giant.

  9. The window

    Mid-May to June and mid-September to mid-October are the two periods when the weather holds. The meltemi, the strong summer north wind, peaks on the west coast from late July to August, lifting sand at Plaka and pinning the swell at Mikri Vigla. The inland Tragea villages of Halki, Apiranthos and Filoti stay cool through high summer because of their height.

  10. The Tragea

    The Tragea is the central valley between Halki, Filoti and Moni, said to hold half of the 270,000 olive trees on Naxos, with around 30 important Byzantine churches among them. Trail 4 (Olive Groves & Byzantine Park of Tragea) links Chalki, Monitsia, Moni, Kaloxylos and Akadimi in a half-day walk. The wider Tragea is part of why Naxos eats differently from the rest of the island chain.

Anchorage Notes

  1. The commercial port

    Naxos Town’s commercial port is the island’s single deep harbour, and with no marina built for superyachts on Naxos, a yacht lies here among the ferries. A berth is arranged in advance by written declaration to the Municipal Port Fund of Naxos, which asks for the vessel’s name, its length and the manner of its mooring before it arrives, and is not settled on the quay on the day.

  2. The tourist anchoring site

    The Port Fund also keeps a separate facility for pleasure craft: the Tourist Anchoring Site of Naxos Port, run apart from the commercial quay under its own regulations and its own application. A chartered yacht is meant to lie there rather than among the freight. The arrangement is made with the Fund in advance, with weather and berth confirmed before arrival.

  3. Apollonas

    Apollonas is a fishing village on the island’s northern tip, with a small pier that serves mostly fishing boats and small leisure craft, and several tavernas and shops along the beach behind it. It lies at the far end of Naxos from the Chora, the main town, and is a quiet call on the north coast rather than a harbour a large yacht would choose. A tender comes for the village itself.

  4. Moutsouna

    Moutsouna, on the east coast some 39 kilometres from the Chora, was the port that shipped Naxos’s emery until the early 1980s. The abrasive stone came down from the mountain mines by an aerial cableway, whose station still stands above the quay. It is a fishing port now, with a small beach, a row of tavernas and limited facilities: a landfall on the quiet east coast, not a marina.

Mythology

  1. Dionysus

    Naxos claimed Dionysus as a god born on the island and raised there by nymphs. Other stories made Naxos the place his voyage with the Tyrrhenian pirates was meant to reach, and his sanctuary at Yria gave the island’s bond with him a monumental setting.

  2. Ariadne

    Theseus leaves Ariadne on Naxos, and in Apollodorus Dionysus falls in love with her and carries her off from here. Local tradition places the abandonment on the islet of Palatia, also called Bacchus, and ancient writers also called Naxos Dia, the name Homer gives the island where she dies.

  3. The Cave of Zas

    The Cave of Zas opens below the summit of Mount Zas, the highest point on Naxos, whose name carries a form of the god's own. Two inscriptions cut into the rock nearby read, in translation, "the boundary stone of Zeus Milousios", but no surviving ancient author places the birth or rearing of Zeus on this mountain.

  4. The Satyrs

    A Roman cameo-glass drinking cup in the J. Paul Getty Museum shows a naked Satyr with panpipes and a crooked staff beside Ariadne, the Cretan princess abandoned on Naxos. A second Satyr plays the lyre on the other side.